1. Field of Invention
The invention relates generally to power management in optical communication networks and in particular to determining the validity of power control loops in an optical communication network.
2. Description of Related Art
Optical communication networks often include optical power management components to make sure that the optical signals are properly transported from one network element to the other. Power management is often done by manually configuring network elements which has a number of drawbacks. First, manually configuring each network element is prone to errors. Secondly, each network element being different, their configuration must be customized which requires time and resources. Thirdly, these manually configured systems cannot easily support optical protection switching that changes wavelength routing, power levels and number of wavelengths at different locations in the network. Finally, network upgrades (e.g., network element addition, hardware addition, new services deployment) can be costly and time consuming since all the network elements in the network might need to be reconfigured.